Nearly 750 villages suddenly flooded in Myanmar (aka Burma). Over 30,000 people evacuated. Hundreds feared missing, including children. 500,000+ acres of farms flooded.
More, including donations, at Global Voices.
Posts tagged disaster.
“On top of all this heat, we’re…experiencing one of the worst droughts in over 50 years.” - President Obama, in his weekly address, “All-Hands-On-Deck Response to the Drought”
USDA Buys $170 Million Of Meat To Help Drought-Stricken Farmers ›
Federal law allows the Agriculture Department to buy meat and poultry products to help farmers and ranchers affected by natural disasters.
The announcement came as Obama criticized Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan for blocking a farm bill that could help farmers cope with the drought. Obama touted his efforts to help farmers as he began a three-day tour of the battleground state he won in 2008.
“That will help ranchers who are going through tough times right now,” Obama said.
Obama said the government would boost its purchases of meat now, while prices are low, and freeze much of it for later use.
The USDA plans to buy up to $100 million of additional pork products, $50 million of chicken, $10 million of lamb and $10 million of catfish. The Defense Department, a large purchaser of beef, pork and lamb, was expected to look for ways to encourage its vendors to speed up purchases of meat.
“The purchases will help mitigate further downward prices, stabilize market conditions and provide high quality, nutritious food to recipients of USDA nutrition programs,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.
The USDA has spent about $37 million on pork products so far this year. If it spends an additional $100 million, that would be more than twice what the agency spent on pork in 2011.
Obama has pledged a wide-ranging response to the drought. His administration is giving farmers and ranchers access to low-interest emergency loans, opening more federal land for grazing and distributing $30 million to get water to livestock.
Good reporting on government handouts to private businesses via CBS.
Google Crisis Response and the 2012 Philippine floods ›
Google has set up a user-generated Person Finder tool and a Crisis Map for the Philippine floods.
It also has resources and links to data from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the Philippine Red Cross, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, as well as information on shelters and evacuation facilities, donation centers, weather updates, YouTube videos, and the flooding extent of the Marikina River.
Google earlier created similar tools and resource databases during the onslaught of Sendong in Mindanao last year, as well as during the Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear leak disaster.
More on ABS-CBNNews.com.
Person Finder
Maps and satellite imagery
- Google Person Finder now in Filipino after floods (siliconrepublic.com)
- Google Person Finder helping to find missing in Philippine floods (news.cnet.com)
- Google Posts Crisis Response Page for Victims and Families of 2012 Philippines Flood (socialtimes.com)
- Google re-launches its People Finder tool to assist those dealing with the Philippines floods (thenextweb.com)
- You: Philippine capital hit by floods (bbc.co.uk)
- Floods rise in the Philippines as residents relocate from Manila amid torrential rains - @CNNi (edition.cnn.com)
- Manila suffers severe flooding following torrential rainfall (guardian.co.uk)
Even among once-skeptical firefighters and usually cautious scientists, there’s little doubt anymore: poor forest management and rapid development primed the West for epic fires, but global warming lit the fuse, and this devastating season has been the result. Kicking off an occasional series, former forest firefighter Michael Kodas looks at the confluence of factors that sparked record-breaking blazes across his state of Colorado, while journalist Dick Manning, a long-time chronicler of wildfires in Montana, laments our lack of preparation, even though we’ve seen this disaster coming for decades.
Climate Change Fuels the Perfect Firestorm
and
Interesting Kickstarter for a documentary film called “Storm Surge,” which (I think) documents the resiliency of people recovering from recent disasters.
Agricultural analyst from JP Morgan states the US will have to turn to importing food from Brazil, possibly Russia. My jaw dropped when she hinted that energy policy is partly to blame, where 40% of corn goes to ethanol production for petrol (though, my understanding is that corn grown for ethanol is not for human consumption. Anyone?).
Disaster Declared in 26 States as Drought Sears U.S.
“More than 1,000 counties in 26 states are being named natural-disaster areas, the biggest such declaration ever by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as drought grips the Midwest”
Which countries are going to suffer most from climate change? ›
Strong (indeed, fundamental) and tight article on climate vulnerability by Laurie Goering, one of the best climate journos in the world. In her piece posted on Reuters AlterNet, Goering discusses the difficult the problem of measuring vulnerability to climate change in a way that can be useful for decision makers.
Which countries are going to suffer most from climate change? It’s a hard question to answer, as any U.N. climate negotiator can tell you.
But there’s now an excellent guide that suggests some answers. The Washington-based Global Adaptation Institute has released its annual look at climate vulnerability - a data-rich trove of interactive maps, statistical charts, rankings and other information on which countries are most naturally vulnerable, which suffer governance and other relevant problems, and which are making progress preparing for climate change.
The “readiness matrix”, for instance, suggests that Zimbabwe, Myanmar and Eritrea are the nations least prepared to deal with climate change, while Burundi and Central African Republic are the most intrinsically climate-vulnerable countries.
Read the rest at AlterNet
Philippine government creates world's first country wide climate adaptation fund ›
Pretty good news out of Manilla, Philippines. The national government passed a new bill that creates an adaptation fund. The fund will go towards projects to prevent disasters and respond to climate risks. Check out what the UN said about the law:
If enacted into law, the People’s Survival Fund will bankroll local governments’ adaptation activities like land and water resources management, agriculture and fisheries, and health and natural ecosystems development, the bill states.
Projects to be implemented should be in line with the government’s climate adaptation plan listed under the National Strategic Framework on Climate Change, it added.
“There is no substitute for national and local government budgets that are climate change-adaptive. The measure will allow us to pole-vault toward ensuring disaster- and climate change-resilient communities,” Ms. Legada said.
The National Treasury will funnel a billion pesos to the fund annually through the General Appropriations Act.
The bill, principally authored by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, also mandated the Budget Department to ensure “the appropriate prioritization and allocation of funds to support climate change-related programs and projects,” the statement said.
Margareta Wahlstrom, UN Secretary-General for disaster risk reduction, last month said Republic Act (RA) 9729 or the Climate Change Act of 2009 is one of the best climate change laws in the world, but noted its poor implementation at the local level.
The country’s climate change law was enacted as an offshoot of tropical storm Ondoy (Ketsana), which ravaged the country in September 2009.
Read the rest at Business World. Follow Climate Adaptation.
Since last year’s disaster in Fukushima, Japan has shut down all 54 of its nuclear power plants. But how long can Japan remain nuke-free? ›
“Perhaps not for long. Already, a slew of reports are warning that Japan could face grim economic consequences if it keeps its reactors offline. Before a tsunami and earthquake caused a meltdown at Fukushima’s Daiichi reactor last year, atomic power provided 27 percent of the Japan’s electricity. Since the shutdowns, the country has been importing more oil and natural gas to keep the lights on. And that’s costly. A recent report (pdf) from Japan’s Institute for Energy Economics found that, as a result, the country’s GDP would grow just 0.1 percent in 2012, and Japan could find struggling with electricity shortages during the sweaty summer months.
By contrast, the IEEJ report found, if Japan began switching its nuclear reactors back on this summer, the economy would grow 1.9 percent this year — largely because lower electricity prices would allow factories to ramp up production. What’s more, by curtailing its fossil-fuel imports, Japan would be able to run a trade surplus this year, instead of a projected $57 billion trade deficit. (Currently, Japan imports about 90 percent of its oil from the Middle East, and the country’s newfound appetite for crude has helped drive global prices upward.)
What Japan does with its reactors could have significant climate-change consequences, too”
Via the excellent Brad Plumer of WaPo
Insurers Prepare for Climate Change…Except in U.S. ›
“In a survey conducted by Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmental groups, more than 75% of insurers acknowledged the existence of perils stemming from climate change.
“Yet despite widespread recognition of the effects climate change will likely have on extreme events, few insurers were able to articulate a coherent plan to manage the risks and opportunities associated with climate change,” the Ceres report states.
The Ceres study found that out of 88 U.S. insurance companies, only 11 had formal climate change risk policies and more than 60% had no dedicated management approach to assessing climate risks.
Ben Schiller at Yale’s Environment 360 noted that while American insurance companies have been slow to prepare for global warming’s ramifications, their European counterparts have been getting ready for a potentially costly future.”
Via AllGov
UN disaster reduction office launches initiative to help cities manage risk ›
“The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction today launched a new initiative to help cities across the world manage risk following the worst year on record for economic losses caused by disasters.
The initiative – the ‘Local Government Self-Assessment Tool’ – is part of the campaign to help cities establish baselines, identify planning and investment gaps for risk reduction and climate change adaptation, the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) said in a press release.
“Cities and towns are on the frontline of disaster risk reduction and bore the brunt of insured economic losses from disasters last year of $380 billion,” said Helena Molin Valdés, the Director of the ‘Making Cities Resilient’ campaign, which aims to reduce urban risks from climate-related disasters.
Ms. Valdés said the new tool would greatly enrich understanding of the challenges ahead as the world considers a new blueprint for disaster risk reduction once the existing plan, the Hyogo Framework for Action, expires in 2015. The Framework – a global blueprint for disaster risk reduction efforts – was adopted by governments in 2005 and aims to substantially reduce disaster losses by 2015.
Some 133 countries have been reporting at the national level on their progress on disaster risk reduction priorities agreed on in the Hyogo Framework. The new local government tool would enable municipalities to submit data for national progress reports for the first time. The tool has been tested in over 20 cities around the world.
UNISDR also announced that over 1,000 cities have now joined the ‘Making Cities Resilient’ campaign, which is creating a widening network of alliances for disaster risk reduction. There are currently 25 partners working with UNISDR to support the campaign, including the Local Governments for Sustainability, which has a membership of over 1,200 cities, towns, counties, and their associations worldwide.”
More at UN News Centre
Call for urgent action in Sahel to prevent humanitarian emergency
The food crisis in the Sahel will turn into a humanitarian emergency unless urgent action is taken, said the NGO Oxfam as it launched a $36.3m (£23m) emergency appeal for west Africa on Friday.
Levels of malnutrition in areas of Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and northern Senegal are becoming dangerously high, warns the NGO, hovering between a rate of 10% and 15%. Some areas have exceeded 15%, which is considered the emergency threshold by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
Among the indicators used to determine famine conditions are when acute malnutrition rates exceed 30% and when recorded deaths are more than two per 10,000 people a day.
The governments of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger have already declared emergencies and called for international assistance.
According to figures published by the UN last week, more than 13 million people are at risk of hunger in the Sahel, with more than 10 million now considered food-insecure. More than 1 million children are at risk of severe malnutrition.
The situation in the region is being blamed on a mix of drought, high food prices and conflict.
Via The Guardian
Donate $3: Oxfam
One year ago, a 9.0 earthquake caused a tsunami to crash into northern Japan. It killed 15,850 people, destroyed 125,000 homes, and created one of the biggest nuclear disasters in history.
Video (screen shot above)
Wikipedia’s excellent entry
Climate Adaptation
by Michael Cote
I want to punch climate change in the face.
A blog about the interactions between the built environment, people, and nature.
I'm a climate change consultant specializing in climate adaptation, environmental law, and urban planning based in the U.S. In addition to traveling and hiking, I research, publish, and lecture on how cities can adapt to climate change.
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